Well.
I struggle.
Like this.
I do.
With a great number of things.
Let me first begin with the subject of “art.”
I am a Novocastrian by birth. By trade. By class. There are a number of things about this that piss me off. Naturally.
I was, this eve, just now, bouncing around at my local watering hole when at long last the subject turned to all matters Bill Henson.
It was, of course, announced, last night on Media Watch: http://www2b.abc.net.au/tmb/Client/Message.aspx?b=33&m=3230&dm=1&pd=2&am=3230
that the Newcastle Herald were the DASHING media publication that pipped the cops off on all things “pornographic” re: Henson’s latest gallery showing.
Well.
www.smh.com.au/news/arts/models-mother-defends-henson/2008/05/29/1211654225893.htm
It’s tricky for me, for a number of reasons, to write, in the way I’d like to.
My health brought me back to Australia (from Tokyo). And my culture renders me in an environment where I’m having these conversations. I think Newcastle has A LOT of things going for it. But to be frank, I find these “pub discussions”– the same I’ve had in a great number of cities throughout the world– dull as fuck
This is why:
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/australia/2048325/Cate-Blanchett-joins-art-censorship-row-in-Australia.html
and this is why:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Henson
We. As Australians are big flat brown nation of people that CONTINUE to be the most opiniated while having the LEAST amount of information.
More of this later:
www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2002/10/16/do1601.xml
Fuck I miss my expatriates.
My Americans.
My artists.
1 Comment
June 4, 2008 at 9:35 am
I think it’s probable that they draw their power for the public, and the ire of these christians, from the same source. One of the reasons that they’ve aroused such passionate feelings in the child protection lobby (largely christian) is because they trade so heavily on religious imagery. You can’t look at the images without being reminded of Caravaggio.
All the photos that i’ve been able to find online have conveyed a deep sense of sadness, which their thinly clothed, emaciated shapes were primarily meant to convey their vulnerability in the face of modernity, in much the same way that the pain and vulnerability of the Martyrs and Saints, if not Christ himself, is drawn out by their nakedness.
I think it’s Ironic. it seems to me, that if there is any singular thing the images are crying out for, it is precisely what these campaigners are asking for: that young people to be defended– but Henson differs by offering that they need defence, not from their own bodies, but from alienation, anxiety and despair…
And before you get too down on Newcastle, it turns out that we own one of his nudies, and it just so happens that they perfectly embody my point. Three teen nudes in a kind of funeral procession….
http://www1.newcastle.nsw.gov.au/strangecargo/images/art/henson1.jpg